Tag: corporations

Spies, Secrets, and iCloud: Apple’s Legal Showdown in London

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in London is the one that will consider Apple’s appeal against the UK’s Home Office secret order to include an encryption backdoor in the giant’s iCloud service.

As things stand now, pending the outcome of the legal – and political – wrangling, iCloud users no longer enjoy the security and privacy benefits of the Advanced Data Protection (ADP).

This affects iCloud Backup in the following categories: iCloud Drive, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Safari Bookmarks, Siri Shortcuts, Voice Memos, Wallet Passes, and Freeform.

Meanwhile, the tribunal itself is “secret,” and the date it will consider Apple’s attempt to avoid the permanent breaking of encryption, and of the trust of its users worldwide, has been set for Friday, March 14.

But privacy activists like Privacy International (PI) want these hearings to be public, since the outcome of the UK’s anti-encryption push potentially affects millions, possibly billions of people around the world.

Secret as it may be, the IPT – which is believed to normally deal with national security issues – announced Friday’s closed-door meeting, a move that is described as “unusual.”

Unusual perhaps, but not illogical – Apple’s appeal against the original secret order was also apparently meant to be secret but has in the meantime been “leaked” to the public.

The original order came from Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who targeted the US company with a “technical compatibility notice.” The end result of compliance was giving UK’s spies and law enforcement access to data, by compromising iCloud encryption.

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Texas Company Lands On Moon In “First Successful Commercial Landing” 

Firefly Aerospace’s “Blue Ghost” lander became the first private spacecraft to successfully land on the Moon after descending from lunar orbit early Sunday morning.

Firefly confirmed on X around 0336 ET that the 6.6-foot-tall lander “stuck the landing” and “became the first commercial company in history to achieve a fully successful Moon landing. This small step on the Moon represents a giant leap in commercial exploration,” adding this “paves the way for future missions to the Moon and Mars.” 

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REMINDER: Friday Is “Feb 28 Democrat Boycott” When Angry Leftists Promise to Stay Home and Not Shop — And a Perfect Time for MAGA to Go Out to Eat and Not Be Bothered by the Lunatic Fringe

Democrats are planning a massive boycott on Friday.

It’s called the “Feb 28 Democrat Boycott!”

Democrats are angry about Trump blocking diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

According to Yahoo various groups have been calling for widespread boycotts to protest corporations who are following President Donald Trump’s lead in rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Democrats love their communism.

The angry left is going to boycott businesses on Friday.

Surprisingly, leftist Nikki Free is bragging about organizing this likely failure that caught on like a smoldering cigarette butt in the rain.

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Your Vital Role in the Decorporatisation of the Food Chain

I am starting this article with information that will make you aware of the provenance for around 90% of all foods that you purchase while shopping at leading super and hypermarkets chains. This raises the important topic of decorporatisation of food.

The reality of what your food choices mean – on the ground – may never have occurred to you. But the reality is that by making supermarket chain stores your first choice for food purchases you have unwittingly become complicit in the creation of vast desert like tracts of land heavily sprayed with toxic agrichemicals.

The soils on these superstore supplying farms have been rendered devoid of life. The crops grow only because of heavy applications of synthetic nitrogen salts.

No worms, no insects, no life. No enriching soil borne microorganisms or microflora. They have been wiped-out by the products of Big Pharma and the weapons of the agrichemical corporation war chest.

The farmers using them have been made to believe that they are being ‘progressive’ and ‘efficient’ by adopting this government and corporate led intensive chemical regime, designed to replace time honored benign traditional farming methods.

Exactly the same tragic story prevails in the livestock sector. Unless you are stipulating organic, your pork and poultry purchases originate in animal concentration camps. Vast sunless sheds in which antibiotics and other drugs are prescribed prophylactically to keep their recipients alive for the three to five months which is the maximum duration of their tragically short existences.

No doubt you will also not realize that by shopping in the predatory supermarkets you have become a causative agent in the death of the small and medium sized family farms that still have respect for crop rotations, the use of natural farm animal manures and humane outdoor livestock rearing.

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Bondi’s DOJ Launches Fraud Investigation of UnitedHealth, Same Insurer Whose CEO Was Assassinated

The Justice Department, now headed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, is reportedly investigating Medicare billing practices from UnitedHealth Group, a move which comes weeks after the assassination of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of subsidiary UnitedHealthcare.

The attorneys are reportedly examining possible civil fraud linked to UnitedHealth Group’s practices for recording diagnoses that allow for extra payments to Medicare Advantage plans, according to a Friday exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal.

That includes potential fraud at physician groups owned by UnitedHealth Group.

Insurers receive payments under the Medicare Advantage system to oversee benefits for enrollees, but the payments increase when certain diagnoses are discovered.

That creates an incentive to diagnose more ailments and receive more payouts.

The Journal previously reported that Medicare paid UnitedHealth Group billions of dollars for “questionable diagnoses.”

Justice Department attorneys have been interviewing some of the same medical providers mentioned in the outlet’s investigations.

The Justice Department is also pursuing an antitrust probe against UnitedHealth Group, and has filed to prevent the insurance behemoth’s $3.3 billion potential acquisition of home healthcare company Amedisys.

The reported civil fraud investigation is separate from those cases.

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Jobs Offshoring and Work Visas Are Means of Enriching Corporate Executives with “Performance bonuses”

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and immigration advocates, such as the American Immigration Lawyers Association, immediately went to work to defeat or to water down the amendment. Senator Grassley’s attempt to prevent American corporations from replacing American workers with foreigners on H-1B work visas in the midst of the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression was met with outrage from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business lobby determined to protect the multi-million dollar bonuses paid to American CEOs for reducing labor costs by replacing their American employees with foreign employees.”

“On January 23, 2009, Senator Grassley wrote to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

“I am concerned that Microsoft will be retaining foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American employees when it implements its layoff plan.  As you know, I want to make sure employers recruit qualified American workers first before hiring foreign guest workers.  For example, I cosponsored legislation to overhaul the H-1B and L-1 visa programs to give priority to American workers and to crack down on unscrupulous employers who deprive qualified Americans of high-skilled jobs.  Fraud and abuse is rampant in these programs, and we need more transparency to protect the integrity of our immigration system.

“Last year, Microsoft was here on Capitol Hill advocating for more H-1B visas.  The purpose of the H-1B visa program is to assist companies in their employment needs where there is not a sufficient American workforce to meet their technology expertise requirements.  However, H-1B and other work visa programs were never intended to replace qualified American workers.  Certainly, these work visa programs were never intended to allow a company to retain foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American workers, when that company cuts jobs during an economic downturn.

“It is imperative that in implementing its layoff plan, Microsoft ensures that American workers have priority in keeping their jobs over foreign workers on visa programs.

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ESG And DEI Are Down But Not Out, Analysts Say

Despite recent eulogies for the environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, many insiders say the funeral is premature.

“Their demise is inevitable, and it has been accelerated,” David Bahnsen, chief investment officer of the Bahnsen Group and formerly an asset manager at Morgan Stanley, told The Epoch Times.

However, “they are not over,” he said.

The ESG movement began two decades ago with a U.N. initiative, sketched out in a 2004 position paper called Who Cares Wins, to get private companies in line with the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Those goals included, among other things, climate action and gender and racial equity, and they aligned with corporate trends such as “conscious capitalism” and “stakeholder capitalism,” which redirected companies from merely serving owners to serving employees, the community, and the environment.

Institutional asset managers gave the ESG movement critical leverage over companies because they collectively own about 80 percent of the shares in S&P 500 companies. Immediately upon its introduction, ESG was endorsed by 23 financial institutions collectively representing more than $6 trillion in assets at the time.

Most major banks, asset managers, and insurance companies quickly joined U.N.-sponsored climate clubs, including the Net Zero Banking Alliance, the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, and the Net Zero Insurance Alliance. This was followed by a proliferation of ESG rating agencies, consultants, accountants, and others dedicated to measuring companies’ compliance with ESG criteria.

Twenty years later, the winds appear to have shifted. In 2024, half of the Net Zero Insurance Alliance members quit, while the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative suspended its activities in January after several of its largest members, including BlackRock, left the group.

A 2024 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) order that required listed companies to produce audited reports of their CO2 emissions and their plans to reduce them, faced numerous court challenges and was recently shelved. And on the social justice front, a parade of companies recently announced that they are downsizing their diversity programs.

“ESG is on death watch,” Daniel Cameron, CEO of the 1792 Exchange, an analytics nonprofit, told The Epoch Times. “You saw a lot of iconic brands last year walk away from DEI in particular.”

Companies stepping back from diversity programs include Amazon, Google, Target, Meta, Walmart, Boeing, Molson Coors, Lowe’s, Ford, Toyota, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniels, Caterpillar, John Deere, McDonald’s, Nissan, Stanley Black & Decker, and Tractor Supply.

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Radioactive Oatmeal: The Shocking Story of How MIT, Quaker Oats, and the Government Exploited Children

In 1945, as the world was recovering from the devastation of World War II, a group of scientists at MIT conducted an experiment that would later be revealed as one of the most unethical studies in modern history. At the Fernald State School in Massachusetts, young boys—many of them vulnerable and voiceless—were fed radioactive oatmeal. The goal? To study how their bodies absorbed iron and calcium. But the real story here isn’t just about science. It’s about betrayal, exploitation, and a shocking disregard for human dignity.

This wasn’t some rogue experiment conducted in a hidden lab. It was a calculated effort involving respected institutions: MIT, Quaker Oats, and the U.S. government. Together, they crossed a line that should never have been approached, let alone crossed.

The “Science Club” That Masked a Dark Agenda

Imagine being a young boy, maybe 10 or 12 years old, told you’re part of something special. A science club! You get extra food, perhaps even a sense of belonging. But instead of being celebrated, you’re being used. The scientists behind this experiment weren’t just studying nutrition. They were helping Quaker Oats prove their cereal was healthy. That’s right—a corporate agenda disguised as research.

The boys were given oatmeal laced with radioactive isotopes. These isotopes acted as tracers, allowing scientists to track how iron and calcium moved through their bodies. But here’s the thing: radiation isn’t harmless. Even in small amounts, it can cause long-term damage. And these boys? They had no idea what they were consuming.

Guardians Left in the Dark

The guardians of these boys—parents or caretakers—trusted the system. They believed their children were in good hands. But the truth? They were lied to. Consent forms were vague, if they were given at all. No one explained the risks. No one mentioned the word “radioactive.”

This wasn’t just a failure of ethics. It was a deliberate choice. The researchers knew what they were doing. They knew the public would never approve. So they kept it quiet. They hid behind the guise of science and progress.

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Top Auto CEO Says He May Pull Production Out of Mexico If Trump Follows Through on Tariffs

The CEO of Nissan has said he may be forced to move production out of Mexico if Donald Trump imposes tariffs on exports.

The head of the Japanese automaker made the comments during a press conference on Friday.

“From Mexico to the U.S., we are exporting a significant number of cars this fiscal year,” Uchida said, according to Reuters.

”320,000 units are exported from Mexico to the U.S., and if the high tariffs are imposed, we need to be ready for this,” he continued.

”Maybe we can transfer the production of these models elsewhere if this were the decision, we will think how we can make it a reality while monitoring the situation.”

“We are exporting a large volume to U.S., so if there’s a high tariff, this would have huge implications on our business, so we need to monitor this carefully.”

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Gay Dragons And Black Samurai: Woke Game Companies In Crisis As Consumers Walk Away

The entertainment sector has been at the core of the woke movement over the course of the last ten years, integrating Critical Race Theory, feminism, gay and trans propaganda, climate change hysteria, anti-gun rights messaging and pro-socialist rhetoric into their content at breakneck speed.  There has always been progressive politics in movies and TV, but this new social justice takeover was a highly coordinated tidal wave; a Blitzkrieg of hard-left ideology into every possible media space.

One group of consumers noticed the threat very early on – Gamers picked up on the leftist subversion of their hobby almost immediately in 2013.  They would go on to launch “Gamergate” in 2014, a movement to expose the feminist hijacking of games journalism and the hobby at large.  They were punished for their foresight, accused of “misogyny”, “bigotry”, “racism” and even terrorism, but they were correct.  There was indeed a far-left agenda to dominate the gaming world and extort companies into adopting social justice propaganda. 

The plan succeeded spectacularly.  Most corporations eventually folded and instituted DEI programs outright.  Gaming developers were some of the worst perpetrators and their products quickly became replete with woke indoctrination.  The one thing they didn’t count on, though, was a consumer revolt. 

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